Lemmy from Motörhead has never told you a lie. Photograph: Eamonn McCabe/Guardian

Let it be stated for the record: Lemmy, singer with Motörhead, is the nation's greatest living Englishman. Some say this accolade belongs to Tony Benn, but attending one of his appearances will cost you up to £35 a ticket and doesn't get you Ace of Spades played by a sexagenarian who sinks two packets of Marlboro Reds and two litres of Jack Daniels a day.

Next month, London sees the start of the South Bank Meltdown festival, the summer's annual pick'n'mix of musical culture. This year's curator is Jarvis Cocker, another national treasure. The band Cocker has chosen to launch Meltdown is Motörhead. I would like to think - no, I believe - there is nothing kitsch about this choice. It isn't the same as people who wear AC/DC shirts to the NME Awards. I feel that Jarvis Cocker understands that Motörhead epitomise rock'n'roll's core ideal, that "the only way to feel the noise is when it's good and loud", and that they are a beacon for defiant celebration.

Lemmy may have hit many a duff note in the past 30 years, but not once has he told you a lie. I was 10 years old when I first heard this band; I was just a week older by the time I owned my first Motörhead record. A month after that I had an iron-on T-shirt. Five years later and I was knee deep in mud at Donington Park, flailing in terror as people fell under my feet, watching in amazement as a firework screamed its way toward Lemmy on the stage. I remember it now: he went ballistic. And then he played Ace of Spades.

Ace of Spades is, of course, the one song loved by everyone who has heard it. Its moral is so clear it could well be Moses on the mic, its timing so deft it might just be the greatest shimmy in rock'n'roll. "You know I'm going to lose, and gambling's for fools, but that's the way I like it baby, I don't want to live forever." In the original studio version Lemmy then warns you to not "forget the joker", but of late the song has been brought up to date. While power chords throb from his Rickenbacker bass and his mouth moves up to a microphone stationed higher than his head, the 61-year-old greatest living Englishman instead says "... but apparently I am."